Month One

This coming Sunday will make four weeks that Chris and I will have been married. As we march toward this relatively small land-mark in our married life, I find humor in reflecting on the adjustments living together has necessitated.

First of all, we are newly-weds in the truest sense of that term. I'm sure our neighbors are tired of seeing us flirtingly race each up the stairs on a regular basis. Chris does the dishes each day and cleans on Sundays so that I can study or relax. I cook dinner, trying out new recipes or requests from Chris (the latest was a fresh pot of home-made beans). The other night I burned broccoli, my first burned meal, and Chris just scraped-off the burned parts and ate it anyways. Oh, the love and bliss that fills our home, everyday, all day, until...bedtime.

Chris likes to go to bed between 10 and 10:30. I usually go to bed between 11:30 and 12. It's not fun going to bed an hour later, rummaging around in the dark to find your pajamas and set the alarm. Then when you crawl into bed you find out that your loving husband, in the innocence of his sleep, has claimed the middle of the bed, relegating you to the small space between his knobby-knees and the edge of the mattress. Fortunately, because I no longer spend an hour each night talking to Chris on the phone, and because I've stopped watching late night TV, I've been able to move my bedtime to coincide with my husband's. I get more sleep and I no longer waste time watching re-runs of Friends and Everybody Loves Raymond.

Since we both go to bed at the same time now, we often spend 15 or 20 minutes talking to each other as we lay in the darkness waiting to fall asleep. Just last night Chris made a comment about this trend. Those few minutes are the closest thing we have our hour-long phone conversations of the past. Don't get me wrong here: I'm not complaining that we don't talk to each other all day, because we do talk to each other during the day. During the day, however, we are doing other things as we communicate. As we lay in bed, there are no distractions.

The other night, as we were laying in the darkness, we got into a somewhat heated discussion about why we wake up multiple times during the night. Chris is of the opinion that the bed is too small, and thus we are constantly "touching" each other. I, on the other hand, believe the problem is that our blanket is too small, and therefore, we are constantly playing tug-of-war. In an effort to prove myself right, I decided we would sleep "Norwegian Style." Norwegian style means that rather than sharing one blanket, each of you has a separate blanket. At the time, I didn't know we were sleeping Norwegian style, but when my Norwegian friend at church explained to me that we were sleeping Norwegian style, I told Chris that he should not complain about the separate blankets because I was actually trying to "culture" him. Anyhoo, we've both decided that the blanket on our bed is too small, although Chris still believes that a bigger bed would also be beneficial. I think we need a bigger apartment first. Our 650 square feet can't accomodate both a king size bed and a home office.

As an alternative to the bigger bed, I have jokingly suggested that we get a smaller bed, adjust to that, and then our queen size bed will feel just right. For some reason Chris doesn't like that idea...